Thread by @gosokkyu

mighty bold of Balan Wonderworld to skip the lazy '90s nostalgia play and instead pit itself directly against every crowdfunded game you forgot you backed seven years ago

I've seen a lot of comments about this game that fixate on Naka, certain post-DC Sega games, etc and I think it's important to emphasise that the actual developer is Naoto Ohshima's studio Arzest which has a long legacy of mediocrity that extends to its predecessor, Artoon

Artoon/Arzest's RPG pedigree is respectable (mostly via association with Hironobu Sakaguchi) but their action game resume stars:

Blinx: The Time Sweeper & Blinx 2
several middling-to-bad Yoshi games
Hey! Pikmin (remember this?)
FlingSmash (you don't remember this)
VAMPIRE RAIN

I don't mean this to come off as a told-ya-so/whaddya-expect, either—I knew all this going in but I hoped Square-Enix money, this being Arzest's first big original game in ages, just wanting to live up to expectations, etc might have coaxed something great out of em ¯\_(ツ)_/¯